


Charity's Case

by JackTheBard



Series: Clod Commissions [4]
Category: Splatoon
Genre: Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Enemies to Lovers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24949594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackTheBard/pseuds/JackTheBard
Summary: Going into the Wayback Machine, we get to see the first date between Claire's parents. Original characters created and owned by Clodcast on tumblr. Commissioned by Oranguin on tumblr.
Series: Clod Commissions [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1370509
Kudos: 2





	Charity's Case

He was good. Some would say that the problem was that he knew it.

He had been on a ten-win streak during this day's tower control session, and more than half of them were knockouts.

He was one of the best, after all. He'd even heard talk about how there were plans to make a rank beyond S plus for people like him, and he was determined to be the first to break into that new frontier.

He stood on the tower, Luna Blaster in hand, barely an intimidating figure to those that didn't know him. He was short, wiry, and his blaster seemed far too big for his hands, but he still wielded it deftly with every part of his body, no motions wasted.

A well-thrown suction bomb landed on the pillar of the tower, and he sank through the grate to clutch to the wall in his squid form. the second it went off, he popped up and gave the person coming up on the other side a full blast to the face, splatting them.

"You wanna try and fuck me, eh?!" he hollered, and he could taste the salt from the enemy team as he pushed. A charger on his side covered him from long-range fire and left him to deal with the up-close-and-personal enemies.

He rode it to victory, and let out a "Booyah" that was way too loud for his small frame.

His team came up and high-fived him, and he gave a big thank you to the charger that had been covering his ass the entire game. Even though the other team kept saying "good game, good game" as they went by, he could see that their hearts weren't in it.

He wouldn't kick them while they were down, though. It wasn't polite. Trash talk was okay on the field, but in the lobby it was just plain rude.

An announcement went off, declaring that the stages had changed, and he looked up at them, only to feel his heart come to a sudden and unwanted stop.

Splat zones. Blackbelly Skate Park and Manta Maria.

_She_ would be there.

He gritted his beak and charged forward into the lobby, signing in to participate in an upcoming match, and knew that she would be on the enemy team even before they spawned in.

The first time they had met, almost four years ago, she had been all joints and limbs while he had been a bobble-headed rookie with the upper body strength of a limp noodle. She had been almost of an age with him, with her being only six months older, but she now stood a head taller than him at the very least.

Honestly, at nineteen, he doubted either of them would go through any more growth spurts. At least he hoped.

Her aerospray gleamed golden in the daytime sun, and he could feel that cocky smile from all the way across the map. He ground his beak in frustration and charged forward with something that was more of a bestial roar than a statement of "let's go."

He lost that match. And the next. And the next. It was only when she found herself on his team that he found victory, much to his chagrin.

But every time he faced her, he lost.

By the Great Zapfish, he _hated_ her.

After all, the mere concept of rivalry is a strange thing.

Some people would claim that rivals are eternal foes destined to be locked in a conflict that will only end when one of them admits defeat (which, let's be real, doesn't really happen) or one of them dies.

These people are incredibly stupid for limiting themselves to only two perspectives of the matter.

However, seeing as one option for a third perspective is somewhat of a spoiler and therefore should not be discussed for the sake of maintaining dramatic tension, let us instead focus on the first two perspectives.

If one of them admits defeat, then this has the singular effect of cheapening the rivalry to something that makes most people that were privy to it think that the whole thing was, in fact, a waste of time.

After all, if you were to go to the park every Thursday for the course of a year in order to play checkers against a single old geezer in a bucket hat and a fleece jacket, you begin to establish a rapport with that old man, even though you never speak a word to him. You might find that you harbor a fondness for this crotchety blue-hair despite the fact that he seems to have his face set in a perpetual frown, and that you think his rheumy eyes judge you all the time.

And, he may very well have a fondness for you, too, as you can practically hear him chuckle with pride as you perform your first successful triple-jump-to-king combo that he didn't see coming for a change.

So, naturally, when you break the news to him that you think that he's better and that you have no desire to come to the park anymore (even though you are being cruel to be kind so he doesn't get up in the inevitable poetry crossfire that happens when a particularly skilled wordsmith comes to town in order to collect more chapbooks for his trophy wall), he will invariably react unfavorably. The end result will be him chastising you about how it's about the joy of the game, not victory, all while he drubs you with a cane that has a dog's head carved into the handle, thereby leaving you with a bruised forehead and a sense of smell that was never right after that.

The other way a rivalry could end is if one member of the rivalry finds themselves unfortunately, irreversibly, and often tragically dead.

These sorts of situations could result in one person cradling their rival in their arms as they die, not unlike a certain painting of a Russian Tsar holding the son that died at aforementioned Tsar's own hands. Fear, despondence, the birthplace of sorrow all intermingling as the surviving rival realizes that the person that they had been fighting against all along was so much more than a rival. In a sense, they had become comrades, equals, or possibly even friends.

It's not unlike when one writer sits at the deathbed of another author succumbing to an incurable disease, clutching at the author's hand as if willpower outside the dying body would be enough to sustain it for even one more exchange of poetry. And, when the author passes, they leave behind a void in the writer's heart that cannot be filled no matter how many boxes of Girl Scout Samoas and pints of Guinness he stuffs into it because he realizes that there is nobody near him in skill; they are all either too far ahead or too far behind, and he is not the kind to become someone's protege or mentor.

You will notice that these examples have a sense of fondness between the two rivals. After all, the fact of the matter is that repeated encounters between two sides will result in each side trying to counter the other's techniques through a form of one-upsmanship that is specific only to that certain pair, meaning that each side begins to understand and know the other side a little better.

This often results in friendship.

This was not the case between these two rivals.

After another fifteen matches, he was knocked down to S rank, yet again, and everyone in the locker room backed away from him as he went on one of his tirades that tended to leave property destroyed and a bill for him in the mail.

"Fucking goddamn smug bitch!" Mike Cloud hollered as he kicked a dent in one locker that did not belong to him. Then again, he probably wouldn't have cared if it did.

"I'm fucking sick of her doing this to me! Every fucking time! FUCK!"

He demonstrated that his compact frame was not weak at all by proceeding to wrench one end of a bench free of its bolts to the floor. He couldn't pull it all the way free and fling it into one of the walls of lockers like he wanted, but he still managed to accomplish a few cracks in the tile and a couple of bolt removals against the expected leverage.

"Sir," a voice said behind Mike. He turned to see a burly security lobster with a badge that looked more like a button on his broad chest.

"Yes?" Mike asked, not even completely respectful towards law enforcement.

"You're going to have to either leave or restrain your language. Again. And we're going to have to bill you for the destruction to public property you caused. Again."

Mike muttered to himself in that ancient language of "angrish" (which mainly consisted of phrases like "mrngl frassle grmb") and stormed off. He'd foot the bill for the wrenched-up bench and the dented locker doors, but he wouldn't be happy about it.

The security lobster watched him as he left and returned to his duties as Mike practically slammed the door behind him and stormed out into Inkopolis plaza. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, and he wore an expression that made stormclouds look cheerful, and everyone stayed away from him as a general rule.

Save for one.

"Knocked down to S again, huh?" a familiar taunting voice came.

Mike turned to stare right into the face of Charity Caliban, Queen of the Splat Zones and the bane of his existence, and he could feel his tentacles turning red with ire.

"Caliban."

He said her name as if it were a curse.

"Cloud," Charity said, her voice much more cheerful than his own.

"Did you come to rub your victory in my face again?" Mike asked.

"You might see it that way, but no."

"Then why are you here?"

"To offer you a tonic, a tincture to inure you against the hatred you have flowing through you right now."

Mike just stared at her. Did she snack on a thesaurus before this meeting, or what?

"I'm offering to buy you juice. Or coffee. Whatever you want. Just so long as you hear me out," Charity said with a roll of her eyes.

Mike's frown deepened. There was no such thing as a free lunch, and there was _definitely_ not such a thing as free juice.

This whole thing reeked of suspiciousness, of the stench of a rival trying to pull one over on him.

... but free juice, tho.

"Fine," Mike said as he stalked towards her and stared up at her with an expression usually reserved for Japanese bikers, "But I'll be watching you."

As mentioned in a previous chapter of this saga, juice is wonderful and a great way to congregate and discuss various issues that may or may not be on someone's mind.

Some people have pain on their mind, and are masochists in this regard.

Mike Cloud was one such person.

The juice that he had ordered was a combination of beetroot, jalapeno, horseradish, and other things that would make any sane person's nose hairs curl up, wither, and die.

In this regard, Mike was not sane.

He drank his juice as if it was, in fact, refreshing, rather than being completely face-melting. Charity, on the other hand, had ordered a simple blackberry smoothie, and watched him with an amused smile on her face. A couple of pieces of complimentary fruit sat on the table between them, a banana for Mike and a pear for Charity.

"So," Charity said as he continued to drink down the potentially lethal concoction.

"So," Mike replied, and the simple act of speaking while he still had that juice on his lips was enough to make her eyes water and for her to cough once.

"I'm sorry for embarrassing you today," Charity said, and she took a sip of her drink that almost made her appear demure.

"Really now," Mike said. He didn't believe a word of this. "Why should today be different from any other time you've embarrassed me by being the sole reason why I get knocked down a rank?"

"Because today, I'm going to make it up to you," Charity said.

Mike arched a curious and skeptical eyebrow.

"I'm serious," Charity said, and if it were any other situation, it would have sounded like she was whining. In this case, unfortunately, she just sounded earnest.

"And what could you possibly do to make it up to me?" Mike asked. If he was a cat, his tail would be lazily waving back and forth right now, as if he was eyeing a weakened mouse.

Charity's voice nor posture faltered as she said, "I'm going to let you take me out on a date."

Mike was glad that he wasn't drinking his juice because it would have come out of his nose when he heard that, and that would have been no fun for any of the involved parties.

"You're joking," he said.

"I'm serious," Charity said as she rested her hands on the table. One was folded over the other, the very image of demure. "You can take me out if you want, and humiliate me the way that I've humiliated you in the past."

Mike's eyes narrowed. If she was putting herself on the chopping block like this, it meant one of two things.

Either 1. She genuinely liked him and was trying to bridge the gap between the two by introducing romance into the rivalry.

Or B. She had a secret devious plot in place that was going to turn the tables on him the second he thought he had the upper hand.

The first option was thoroughly ludicrous, so it obviously had to be the second.

"Give me one good reason," Mike said, his voice measured, "Why I should even _consider_ going out with my nemesis."

Charity's expression and posture may have been demure just a moment before, but what she did next was anything but.

She reached across the table and plucked up Mike's banana before she opened her mouth wide and slipped it past her lips.

The whole thing. Peel and all.

Mike would have been impressed already if she had stopped with her lips around the stem that poked impudently out of her mouth.

But then, after a moment, Mike could see her mouth working, and after another, he could see her throat doing the same.

She swallowed, then pulled out the now-empty banana peel, a single split along its length, and stared at Mike.

She had never broken eye contact with him the entire time.

Mike's gaze shifted down to the banana peel on the table and considered that it made a very compelling argument.

If she wasn't just messing with him, then the implications of that...

"I'll meet you here at five," Mike said despite every competitive bone in his body screaming that he should turn her down.

Charity's face brightened immediately, and she stood up to practically flounce away. Was that a skip he saw in her step?

Either way, Mike had preparations to make. If he was going to get one up on her, then he would have to make a couple of phone calls.

Phone calls made, he went back to his apartment about six blocks from Inkopolis Plaza (perks of being Turf War famous), and decided to faceplant into the bed for a nap.

Unfortunately, he did not set an alarm, and that resulted in him having to do the patented "Bachelor's Quick-Prep For Date" that had him juggling putting on shoes with one hand, applying deodorant with the other, hastily changing his tentacles while he stared in the mirror with a toothbrush hanging out of the corner of his mouth. It was a difficult technique to master, but it yielded excellent results, such as being able to be at a five o'clock meeting when you woke up at four-thirty.

Unfortunately, Charity beat Mike to the punch anyways. Fortunately, it looked like she hadn't been waiting long.

He was even two minutes early.

"Caliban," he said, though his voice held a fraction of the venom that it did earlier.

"Cloud," she said, and he thought he saw the vestiges of a smirk playing at the corners of her lips even as she raised a coffee cup to them. Presumably to hide it.

"Should I get coffee too, or will you be able to finish that quick?" he asked as he sat down.

"My, my," Charity teased as she set the mostly-full cup down on its saucer. "Eager, aren't we? You should know that I won't repeat that banana feat tonight. I'm not that easy."

A vein pulsed in Mike's head, and he had to restrain himself from lashing out in anger. She was prodding him, poking him, all in an attempt to see who got the last laugh.

"Well, I just want to skip the foreplay and get straight to humiliating you," Mike said casually as he shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

"Aww," Charity said, mock disappointment tinging her voice, "But foreplay is the best part."

He couldn't keep a scowl off his face as she sipped her coffee again, and he knew that the thoughts running through her head were smug.

They didn't speak as she finished her coffee, and he even stood to offer her his arm, prompting a statement of "My, aren't we the gallant one?"

"I just don't want you getting lost," he replied, as even-keel as he could be.

They walked to the train station and caught a ride out towards the museum that harbored the Manta Maria, and got off three stops before the landmark. Dason led the way towards a building that read "Crystal Star Roller Rink."

Charity looked over at him and raised a questioning eyebrow. "I didn't know you could skate."

"I didn't know you couldn't," Mike said, and flashed a smile that was equal parts genuine and wicked.

"You have plans, don't you?" Charity asked.

"That obvious?"

"I'm just curious to see what those plans are."

When he opened the door to the roller rink, it became very obvious what he had in mind.

There was disco music playing, and people with their tentacles styled up in the various styles of the seventies, and clothing to match, skated around in circles on the roller rink while "Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees played over the speakers and a multicolored disco ball revolved overhead.

Just being in the room with such an abominable sight was enough to humiliate anyone, but Mike was willing to subject himself to the embarrassment if Charity went through the exact same thing, or worse.

Instead, he found that Charity was laughing.

"By the Zapfish!" she said, barely able to contain herself, "This is so tacky! You really know how to treat a girl to a good time."

He couldn't find a facetious note in her voice.

The proprietor, a stout inkling by the name of Jerry Scrimshaw, approached the pair with arms full of accouterments. "Mikey! Got your call, procured the stuff. Guess you couldn't really lug it here with you, could I?"

"Mainly I wanted it to be a surprise," Mike said as cordially as he could. It was hard to be cordial when one was struggling to keep a demonic smile off one's face. "Jerry, this is Charity-"

"Charity Caliban!" Jerry said, and he nearly dropped half of the gear that Mike had ordered as he stepped forward to shake her hand, "Queen of the Splat Zones! Never thought you two would come here together. I thought you despised each other."

"It's mainly one-sided," Charity said, "I'm extending an olive branch to him, and so far, he hasn't disappointed."

She shot Mike a grin that could have lit up the city by itself. It angered him because it seemed so genuine.

And what did she mean by "hasn't disappointed"? Was she expecting him to try and finally get one over on her, or was she actually having fun?

Considering the abundance of disco music, the latter didn't seem that likely.

"Y'all can change in the staff bathrooms. Nobody will bother you there," Jerry said as he handed out their respective outfits.

Charity took one look at the outfit in her arms, and that smile somehow managed to grow even more.

Mike had to convince himself that this was just a case of psychological warfare. She was trying to get him to tip his hand. It wouldn't work.

They ducked into their respective bathrooms to change, and came out looking like nightmares of the 1970s.

Charity had changed into the shimmering silver bell bottoms that Jerry had procured, and the matching top only hung on one shoulder and left her arms and midriff bare. To top it all off, she had changed her tentacles to resemble one very large orb, making an afro that bounced whenever she walked.

Mike looked no less ridiculous, wearing a flame-red suit jacket with wide lapels, matching bell bottoms, and a zebra-print button down that was open almost to his navel. Around his neck hung a gold chain with a golden male sex symbol hanging from it.

Charity took one look at him and burst out laughing.

"You look just as ridiculous as I do," Mike pointed out. He was lying. Her outfit at least matched. Admittedly, there was nothing that could match zebra print, but he was going to let her point that out if she did at all.

"So we both look ridiculous," Charity said as she moved a little bit closer to him. He felt his heart start to race, and he had to forcibly tell himself "down, boy. This is serious."

"Let's see if we can dance as ridiculous as we look," Charity said, and Mike's heart screeched to a stop.

Oh _hell_ no. She was actually enjoying herself. She was willingly subjecting herself to ridicule and humiliation because she thought it was _fun_.

Mike had to meet her head-on.

"Should we do normal skates or platforms?" he asked. The second would increase the stupid factor of the whole evening, but were a dangerous proposition.

"I don't want to break my neck," Charity said with a laugh as they made their way up to the counter where Jerry was giving out skates to other people dressed in similarly insane attire.

"Mikey! You both look great!" Jerry said as he threw his arms out wide as if for a hug.

"We look ridiculous," Mike said, though Jerry seemed to take it as a form of agreement.

"You both look like you were made for the world of disco. Let me get you some skates," he said as he turned around.

Mike and Charity gave their respective sizes and Mike added, "And could I get those as platforms, please?"

Charity gave him an appraising look.

He stared right up at her and said, "I want to close the height gap a little bit," as if that was the actual reason. She didn't dispute it and instead only shrugged.

He had to maximize the ridiculous if he was going to have any sort of chance against her.

And to think that the evening had begun with him trying to humiliate her. Now he was going out of his way to make himself look the fool because apparently she was having fun looking the fool and he wanted to look the fool better than she did.

Okay, so Mike wasn't the best when it came to making logical plans that made sense. Hell, it was probably safe to say that his plans made about as much sense as a tricycle missing its front wheel.

They left their kicks with Jerry and laced up the skates, making their way out onto the dance floor to the sound of Wild Cherry's "Play that Funky Music," which, although not a disco song, still oozed seventies energy and let people get their groove on.

Charity didn't hesitate to start skating out along the edge of the rink, and Michael joined her quickly, to the point where he passed her by and spun around so he was skating backwards almost effortlessly. At least it looked effortless. It took a lot of skill to do what he was doing and make it look easy.

She laughed, and Mike found himself smiling as well as she crouched down low and coasted on by to take the lead in this non-race again.

Mike followed her in a heartbeat as the song changed to the Bee Gees' "That's the Way I like It," and so it went.

Mike didn't know at what point he stopped caring about how ridiculous they looked and started having fun. It must have been sometime around the point where they took a break to get a quick bite from the snack bar and they started joshing around about what he could do with an ice cream cone that would get Charity's attention in the same way that her banana trick had gotten Mike's.

They eventually called it quits when they were two of the last five people in the rink, and Mike was surprised to have Charity take his hand in hers as they left Crystal Star.

"Um... what are you doing?" Mike asked, though his tone made it clear that he wasn't uncomfortable.

"I was waiting for you to hold my hand all night, but you didn't take the initiative," Charity said with a shrug.

Mike felt his face turn A Color and glanced away from her. "You mean you weren't going to try and make a fool out of me?"

"At first, I was," Charity said, and Mike could quickly pass the flush in his cheeks off as anger as he glared at her.

She held up her other hand in a placating gesture and said, "Whoa, whoa! I mean that I changed my mind. I always have fun when I'm playing against you and I wanted to get to know you without this whole deranged rivalry thing in the way."

Deranged?

She thought that the battle between two titans of their craft over the course of four years, constantly pushing each other to be the best that they could be was _deranged?!_

He almost left on the spot, but Charity's next words kept him there.

"Honestly, I've been wanting to ask you out for six months, now."

Mike paused and looked up at her with a question apparent on his face.

Now it was Charity's turn to blush, and she glanced away with a muttered, "Come on, don't look at me like that... You're embarrassing me."

So she was embarrassed by him just looking at her, but not by the fact that they had spent the better part of two hours in a roller rink, dressed in clothes that would be considered fashion disasters even in the disastrously unfashionable era that they had come from.

Mike didn't say anything, still. He wanted to see how long this would go on. That, and he finally seemed to realize that she... was actually kind of good-looking.

He'd spent so long looking at her as a rival, an enemy, a smug being that was the bane of his ranked existence, that he didn't even consider the fact that she was a girl.

High cheekbones, soft lines to her face, a cute nose...

"Well?" Charity asked, her voice a little worried.

"Hmph," Mike said as he turned away from her, even though he still held her hand. "I guess that tonight was fun, but only because you looked completely ridiculous."

Charity caught the hidden meaning immediately and grinned.

"Whatever you say, Mr. Zebra Shirt," she said in reply.

"You try and match zebra stripes with anything that's not in an African savanna," Mike said firmly, and Charity giggled and gave his hand a soft squeeze.

"Besides," he continued, "I think I'd like to hang out with you again, anyways."

Charity's eyes and smile both widened, and Mike glanced back at her before adding, "It's not like I enjoyed hanging out with you today or anything like that. I just liked seeing you look silly. So I won't pass up another opportunity for that."

She started giggling, and he glanced back over at her with a glare that barely had any venom in it. It's not like his heart wasn't in it or anything like that. He just felt like being a little nice to her for a change.

"I'd like that, too," Charity said, and she gave his hand another squeeze. "How does same time, same place, Thursday sound? I'll pick the outing, this time."

Now it was Mike's turn to smile. 

"Deal. And maybe I'll show you that trick with the ice cream cone."


End file.
